The Mercy They Won't Find
by extraoctaven
Summary: she just showed up swollen and scared, eyes so impossibly big that they left no room for a smile. she pulled murphy aside and removed the blanket that she previously was clutching to her stomach. and there it was, her stomach, swollen and full and round with the promise of life.
emori's pregnant. her stomach, it's big and full with life, **a** life, that murphy helped create. god.

god.

emori, she just showed up swollen and scared, eyes so impossibly big that they left no room for a smile. she pulled murphy aside and removed the blanket that she previously was clutching to her stomach. and there it was, her stomach, swollen and full and round with the promise of life.

is this where emori had been?

emori breaks down into tears and it startles murphy because for as long as he'd known emori, she hadn't cried. maybe she hadn't even frowned. those couple blissful months of playing dead and making love underneath the stars so happy and free that they might burst, that's what murphy remembered about emori. not this swollen stomach and crying woman.

for a while, it doesn't sink in that it's his. it couldn't be. he'd just been sent down here to this god forsaken planet months ago and now emori was having a baby? his baby, his swollen stomach. his little human that reduced emori into sobs and quakes. his. and once that sinks in, it hits him ten fold that he already loved it.

the love was uncomfortable. it was different than loving emori or all those girls back on the ark. it wasn't like how he loved his father when he was alive or how much he loved to read. this was different. it was deeper than anything he's ever felt before and that makes him uncomfortable and uneasy. he can't quite look at emori without feeling a little nauseous and it was all the fault of something that wasn't even born yet.

he cradles emori when she cries and doesn't answer her **where have you been's** and **ive been looking everywhere's** because **i've been screwing the commander** doesn't seem good enough for the woman who held a part of him so deep inside her that murphy couldn't reach.

ontari was all sex and lust. she was intensity and overbearing and the overwhelming promise of death.

but emori, she was gentle, gentle to him anyway. she was badass and could defend herself (better than murphy can) even if that meant killing someone but she understood what it meant to be human. she was outcasted, just like him.

murphy appreciated them both but he only loved one of them. he'd only gotten one of them pregnant.

murphy was going to be a father.

right then he swore he had to be better. his own father was a good man but his mother was the reason for his torments at night. he still woke up in angry sweats because of her, he still punched trees because of her. every memory of his mother tainted the memories of his father. he couldn't do that to a kid. both of them had made him who he was and that scared murphy, having so much control over a person. this thing was going to be reflective of him as a person.

what a fucked up kid.

he steals another gaze at the now sleeping emori. he presses his fingers against her protruding stomach. her stomach felt weird, both soft and firm at the same time, kind of like emori.

maybe the kid would be all right.

ontari returns. as months passed, emori grew. but so did war so ontari stayed away. inevitably, war harbors. imagine her surprise when she returned and her thing (she deserved him, how could he?) had run off and knocked up some mutated bitch.

murphy fought the urge to slap her at the insult. he thought better when he realized he wanted to be able to see his child when it was born.

"how could you, you worm!" she shouts in her native tongue. murphy understood well enough. he'd picked up her insults fairly quickly. "you knocked up a bitch?!"

"i told you there was someone else," he begins calmly. ontari slaps him in return.

"you had a commander!" ontari grips murphy so hard he starts to squirm against her. "and you chose some mutated whore. i was wrong to trust you."

for a while she doesn't do anything but grip murphy so hard he knew he was going to leave bruises. yeah, she liked to leave those.

finally, she spoke. "leave before i kill you."

so he does with anger deep in his stomach at ontari's insults. he finds emori where he'd hidden her away in case ontari had snapped like he'd expected. she doesn't come out until he calls for her.

"emori?"

"what happened?" she asks, emerging from a hideaway that was undetectable to the untrained eye.

"well, she didn't kill me."

together they slip out of polis before ontari can change her mind and they become apart of the forest again.

life with emori, his pregnant emori, was confusing. sometimes emori couldn't get enough of him. murphy laid against her stomach for hours listening, feeling, and experiencing his child in the best way he could. he'd talk to her stomach, nothing sappy, just the occasional, "hey kid" or "i'm your dad." she'd smile and laugh at him and tell him how great of a father he was going to be, just like his own. but other times emori wouldn't want anything to do with him. she'd curl away from him in bed with her good hand wrapped tightly around her stomach, her bad one tucked under her so it couldn't be seen. she'd whisper "how could you do this to me" into their silence and murphy understood. he'd probably be equally freaked out if a child was growing inside of him, too.

the first time the baby kicks (the baby had kicked before but the first time murphy can feel it) all the hard in him melts for a second. he's not an angry kid banished to the ground for his crimes or a delinquent who sought satisfaction from killing in the name of revenge. in that moment, with a little baby thudding against his palm as it presses into emori's stomach, he's happy, he's full, he's a dad.

"i think it's going to be a girl," emori murmurs while it kicks, murphy palm still lays against her stomach. he feels the little thing flutter against his hand again.

he takes in a sharp breath as the same uncomfortable feeling of love fills him. "she's kicking."

a few months later emori's water breaks. it's nighttime and murphy wakes up to wetness and a panting emori. it's only a few more hours after that and their baby is born.

"she's… small," murphy whispers, bringing her screaming body close to his face for inspection. "i didn't think…"

he wipes her down and cuts her umbilical cord. two of her tiny fingers are formed into one. she has a mutation. murphy's suddenly furious at all the parents who could take such an innocent, tiny thing and toss it out for dead because of something so small.

"emori, look she-"

emori takes the baby from his arms and nearly sobs. "she's like me," she says. murphy can't tell how she feels. "oh, john, her hair."

murphy's eyes widen. while she carried most of emori's features, her rounded eyes, her button nose, her turned up lips, she had significantly lighter hair than emori did. she had his hair. she was his.

"oh," he murmurs softly. he smooths his hand over emori's hair and then trails down to touch his daughters cheek. "i- oh."

"what are we going to name her?"

"imani," murphy suggest immediately. he kisses emori on the head softly and goes to fetch fresh blankets for emori and the baby. they'd found them in this abandoned house where they now lived.

"why?"

"it means faith," he says, helping emori into the fresh blankets and throwing the soiled ones into a heap on the ground.

imani yawns her wet baby yawn and emori mirrors her. "it's beautiful, just like her."

"you're tired."

emori laughs gently at that. she traces her fingers over imani's mutated fingers. "yeah."

"sleep. we'll start looking for the others after you heal."

"but-"

murphy takes imani into his arms far more naturally than he would've thought. "i've got her. i'll protect us."

emori smiles big and bright. her eyes start to flutter shut but not before, "my john, the father," leaves her mouth sounding truer than anything he'd ever heard before.

he holds imani tighter.


End file.
